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July 10, 2008

Under The Knife

Cooked?

by Will Carroll

Aaron Harang (7 DXL)
"Tight forearm" sounds kind of innocuous, like "skinned knee" or "bum ankle." Colloquial always sounds better than technical, but sounds better isn't always better. Harang may seem like the prototypical workhorse, but this kind of injury is seldom just nothing. Going through the list of names, there are guys like John Patterson, Josh Johnson, and Shawn Hill who all had this type of forearm stiffness as a precursor to far more serious elbow problems. Sure, there are some like Felix Hernandez, for whom forearm stiffness was nothing more than that, but the list of players is much more negative than I'd expected. Harang's workload isn't tremendous, though he does have a number of starts of more than a 100 pitches, and the occasional period where he seems to lose it for a start or two, and then get it back. This is no different under Dusty Baker than it was in past seasons without him, so eliminating that culprit leaves me taking a hard look at the relief appearance he made at the end of May as a tipping point, despite Baker's protestations against the facts. (Just check his game logs, especially the game scores.) He's 14^th on the PAP list, though his stress score of 13 is hardly worrisome, and wouldn't have made the top 50 just five years ago. Harang's velocity and control were off last time out, another big red flag. Harang is heading back for imaging and a visit with Tim Kremchek, and Reds fans may be holding their breath and hoping that Harang will only miss one start or just have a short DL stint. Initial testing makes it seem as if the UCL is intact, so we won't know much until the results are back.

Erik Bedard (15 DXL)
Moving Bedard to the DL really doesn't change anything. It gives the Mariners some roster relief, having played a man down for ten days, but Bedard wasn't going to throw until after the All-Star break anyway. With the retro move, Jim Riggleman will need to re-set his rotation a bit differently after the break. Some might say that it means that the M's can't trade Bedard, but this is one of those urban legends; a player can be traded while on the DL, thought it happens so infrequently that it's understandable that people think it can't be done. There's no change in the status of Bedard's shoulder either, so this move really means... nothing. Bedard is expected to be back in the rotation for what could be the final two starts in his Seattle stay, assuming the soreness is gone by then.

Eric Byrnes (90 DXL)
Speed players and hamstrings are a bad combination, so what does tearing it completely do for Byrnes in the long term? He's out for the season! The question now is whether the three-year deal he signed last season becomes a drag on the young D'backs. I think it does, because there are really no good comps for players having this type of injury and coming back and being productive. Some have, but none have come back to provide the speed/hustle combination that the Shaggy One uses. I'm not convinced that Byrnes without his speed is anything more than a fourth outfielder, and those players shouldn't make $10 million per year. Byrnes' leg isn't so bad that he'll need surgery, though the recovery time is going to be roughly the same. He'll be ready for spring training, but his future depends on adjusting his game.

Mark Mulder (80 DXL)
Does Mulder only lasting sixteen pitches really surprise me? I don't think I'd have predicted this, but I'm not really stunned by the result either. No one who saw Mulder pitch along his rehab path saw anything that gave much hope that he'd be able to pitch effectively. That he came up with "severe pain" so quickly makes me wonder if he was throwing as hard as he could along the way, and that once he did go all out, the shoulder simply gave out. Surprisingly, I heard from a lot of Cubs fans when Mulder went down, all of them worried that Mulder's injury problems are some sort of sign that Billy Beane knew this would happen, and that he's doing the same sort of thing with Rich Harden. If so, I wonder why Beane wouldn't have traded off Eric Chavez or Bobby Crosby before their problems arose. Mulder is just a reminder that injuries can hit the best of pitchers, and that an injury history has to be noted. I think we've seen the last of him on a mound.

Dustin McGowan (80 DXL)
News went from bad to worse for the Jays when McGowan's imaging showed a torn rotator cuff. He's done for the season, leaving him with the question of choosing surgery or rehab, though the team is still officially saying that he could return in a month. That just doesn't happen with this type of injury. If McGowan is able to avoid the operating table, he could be back by next spring, but it's a coin-flip proposition, and there always seems to be some cost. McGowan has had injury troubles previously, making this one of those slow and insidious injuries that remind us that somewhere on the kinetic chain, there's always going to be a weak link. If the Jays weren't there already, McGowan's injury should push them into "next year" mode. We'll have to see if that includes McGowan, who could lose much of 2009 if he needs surgery.